On the Today programme this morning Alistair Darling confidently said that the Lehman Brothers bank collapse in the States last year caused the financial crisis over there.
Well 'no', Darling. If I heard you correctly as my bathwater gurgled down the drain then this was not the cause of it. It was partly a result of it - and it happened it around the same time as things started to get really bad globally.
Similarly, most of my pharmaceutical clients keep on pouring money into various corporate websites and expensive sales rep materials - insiting that you need these if you're to have a successful drug.
Well, and I think there are a few people beginning to wake up to this now: NO. You just keep commissioning these marketing materials - and your drug sometimes does well. But one is not the cause of the other.
It's correlation at best.
You speak of ROI, Mr Client, but pretty much none of you has an idea of how to measure this. You really mean: 'does that sound a lot based on what we reckon we'll make from the drug'.
It's not even worthy of the term 'cost effective' because you don't have any end-to-end metrics in place to work out whether it was that cost that brought about the desired effect.
However, if my clients change their tune tomorrow I'd love to think that this blog post caused it.
1 comment:
Post hoc ergo proctor hoc!
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